Hello, big bad world! It’s almost my birthday! Aging is so fun, and so is thinking about it and having attention drawn to it! After all, there’s so much to celebrate: Moving past the age at which I thought I’d have accomplished pretty much all of my life goals without having accomplished all of said life goals, aging out of my mother’s health insurance, continuing to be too old to drink the way I once drank in order to cope with my existential crises about aging, and no longer being closer to twenty than thirty, for starters! Here’s to becoming 26 in the midst of my infamous #SummerOfSelfSabotage and feeling very great about it.
Honestly, though, I front like I hate birthdays but I’m a Leo so some parts of the whole “growing up” and “becoming an adult” and “Carmen when are you getting your life together thing” really do appeal to me — specifically parties thrown exclusively in my honor, birthday cards I wasn’t expecting you to send, gifts that come in large boxes even if the gift itself is small, telling other people where to meet me and having them actually show up and then probably buy me drinks and food, etc. — which is why despite my perennial terror about wasting my youth I wrote an entire open thread to goad y’all into wishing me a happy birthday.
But I digress. The point here is that in order to stave off my angst about being too old to vomit in the street but too young to die and (unrelated but just for your reference) the crumbling of my moral fiber, I decided this year to find 26 birthday cakes that would make me feel fabulous instead of near to the brink of my irrelevance. I probably won’t bake them, because baking is not in my wheelhouse, but I do like looking at them. (If you bake one for me, I’ll do everything I can to change your world before everything falls apart and I drive into the desert instead of emailing you back.)
1. Flamingo Pool Float Cake
2. Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake
3. Turtle Chocolate Layer Cake
4. Coconut Key Lime Rum Cake
5. Salted Caramel Kentucky Butter Cake
6. Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cake
7. Orange Dreamsicle Cake
8. Milk and Cookies Cake
9. Strawberry Cream Dream Cake
10. S’mores Cake
11. Cake Batter Cheesecake
12. Malted Chocolate Cake
13. Giant Cinnamon Roll Cake
14. Sno-Ball Cake
15. Banana Split Layer Cake
16. Cotton Candy Layer Cake
17. Donut Cake
18. Berry Cake with Lemon Cream Mousse
19. Almond Cream Cake
20. Strawberry Triple Layer Cake
21. Billionaire Cookie Dough Cake
22. White Chocolate Raspberry Cake
23. Homemade Confetti Cake with Cotton Candy Cloud Frosting
24. Lemon Blueberry Layer Cake
25. Banana Pudding Layer Cake
26. Mint Chocolate Layer Cake
